Fetzen

The Sunday Group

@Penny I've been swamped in work this week so far. I'm sorry if that caused any delays for anyone :/ My post should be up either within the next few hours or tomorrow at the latest.

_{(and yes, I know, I'm saying something like this very often...)}

O R I F L A M M E

Departure from Relouse

---

After the encounter with the daring Eskandr wall-jumpers, Otios had not seen that much of the battle until it had come to its conclusion. The city's walls, combined with the strict order to retreat to them, had prevented him from getting outside again -- not that he had been eager to see more of the carnage from close by anyway. A few thunderbolts hurled from the top of the wall, some assistance with igniting large oil barrels or other projectiles drenched in flammable substances, nothing more it had been from his side that cruel night. He himself had been in dire need of mending, a term more commonly used when it came to machines instead of a living being, but probably more appropriate than 'healing' if one took a look at the cramped places where the wounded were treated.

It wasn't that those attending to the injured were doing a bad job, on the contrary. However they could neither bring true restoration for they couldn't erase those memories that would nourish people's nightmares for years or even lifetimes, nor prevent any able-minded individual from stumbling upon the absurdity that was going on: People were put into the grinder standing just outside the city walls only to be patched together and reassembled hours later again inside. And for what ? So that the Parrench army could keep going, so that the process could continue until the loop was completely drained of resources -- humans and yasoi.

Could one blame the Parrench for this ? Certainly not for this conflict had been forced upon them, but history told that the people living here were able to take the initiative in terms of war, too. Could one blame the Eskandr ? In terms of direct causality absolutely, but Otios knew that he had never been far enough to the South yet to truly know whether their situation there perhaps was just too dire to stay. Could one blame humanity as a whole for being unable to find different solutions for such situations and for mixing faith, pride and greed into the mix in tremendous quantities as well ? Yes and this time with neither ifs nor buts!

It was with mixed feelings then when Otios left the gates of Relouse behind him in the morning. At least he'd be able to leave the stench behind before it came to the worst. The flies would thrive and so would the rats and other carnivores whose preferred diet were the already dead. Mass sickness was just bound to come for nothing could keep Relouse's ground water safe from the decay reaching it. Some fancy clerics had quiet profoundly dismissed his idea of improving the dead body situation by letting those having the gift of thunder joining forces to create an improvised, but large scale incineration pit. What he had done with the poker a few hours prior, just bigger! Something that wouldn't need loads of wood or oil to just halfway burn the dead, but would just do things so much more profoundly at a much, much higher temperature. 'Blasphemy!', the holy man had uttered. So first they all had helped to mass produce death and now they were afraid of mass disposal of the outcome albeit knowing that no other approach would be able to prevent even more mass misery in the aftermath ? There certainly were things Otios could not understand...

And so he rode on, trying to reach Loriindton rather sooner than later. If the interpretation of things was right, then there was a real chance of the entirity of Yasoi to be dragged into this mess in an uncontrolled manner. Just staying out of the whole affair would have been the most preferrable option, but he himself had already dismissed that one the moment he had followed Lady Talit's call here. The Eskandr simply couldn't be trusted for staying neutral in case they'd have dealt with Parrench one day. They were humans too after all and right on their way of proving their aggressive potential. If he only had the choice between staying neighbours with a potentially nasty human nation A and a potentially nasty human nation B, then it was obvious to pick the one less unfamiliar.

The Elder Scrolls: In the Shadow of Oblivion

Interested.

The Sunday Group

Fynn LaPlace

Had it not been for the invention of charge-coupled devices and the wide arc of digital cameras employing this technology, Fynn would probably have needed an awful lot more workouts than he apparently used to subject himself to. It would have been barely possible for the small-ish man to handle the sheer amount of analog film produced by the number of crime scenes the Sunday Group encountered otherwise. The IT specialist continued photographing the car, the rubbermarks, the grooves in the gravel and everything else he deemed to be of importance until he was confident to have gotten everything from all perspectives needed. Also he had littered the place with small rulers and cubes indicating lengths and volumes for later reference.

Or, in other words, now that Eleanor had clearly pointed out the need for speed and his laptop also requested his attention by means of beeping, Fynn was in an elevated state of haste in order to wrap things up. Lowly muttering something to himself that could hardly be understood as anything else than a curse, he started picking up his various utensils from the ground again and drop them into a leather bag where they'd find some more protection.

The corner of his eyesight still found an opportunity to pick up what Primrose was doing. To him it was rather obvious out of sheer experience, but at the same time he was certain that, for the cop in the car, the situation was very grim without him even noticing -- simply because Primrose once more sold it with just the right mixture of determination and charme. Maybe she'd even be able to convince the man to give up on donuts, thereby extending his potential lifespan ?

Unfortunately however the laptop on the car's roof didn't stop indicating that it had finished the job. Somewhere inside its pretty vast solid state drive were now located all of the car's internal error flags, a complete copy of each control unit's flash memory and various other information and measurements as far as these could be done just by accessing the diagnostic connector. For more he'd have to get the car into the workshop, or just the time to tear it apart on the spot. The latter however was pretty much ruled out.

"Hey, Eleanor ?" he asked with a fairly obvious smirk around his lips, "Would you like me to implant some other data into the car so to make it look less like a worthy crimescene to the police ? Because, according to what I can see here by means of a short glance only, that's what it really is unless we're dealing with a case of extreme improbability. This car has airbags, but either they have been removed or disconnected. All of them. And either our dead driver has decided to just commit to an horrendous act of stupidity and ignored all warning lights, or the dashboard has been rigged for them not to work anymore."

Synopsis

- Fynn finishes his 'classic police work'
- His initial data readout indicates that the car has been manipulated to make any occupant's death more likely in case of an accident.
- However this is only a somewhat preliminary conclusion limited by short time and the inability to make a thorough physical inspection. Or, in other words: He can neither confirm nor rule out that additional measures were taken to cause the accident to happen in the first place.
- Not in accordance with 'classic police work', he offers Eleanor to sabotage the car to make it more difficult for the official police to find out the truth, thereby possibly buying the Sunday Group some more time since the investigation has only just begun.

The Sunday Group

Would you like to post first or can I happily have Fynn complete his readout and come to some preliminary conclusions in case I find the time to post before you do ? I could also have him just do a data dump and a later analysis, which given the fact that official police is already coming at us might be the better choice anyway.

O R I F L A M M E

Fight against some wall-jumpers

Location: Within the city of Relouse

It seemed that Sakar had survived the encounter with Horik The Golden, or rather Horik The Dead now, with only minor injuries that did not impeed the horse's ability to keep carrying its rider around at a much quicker pace than the latter could have done on his own. This did not mean that anything was over in the Witchwood though as the other monster whose name Otios did not even know at this point had clearly survived and was now strolling around unseen, something that felt quite discomforting after their initial encounter. Still there was not really anything left for the Yasoi to do here, simply because he himself was not in the best of states anymore and there were no chances left to avoid brutally open encounters as this one and he clearly was not trained for these.

So it was even before the general call to retreat towards the city that Otios was already headed towards a northern gate of Relouse in order to get in before it would be locked down for anyone. He could keep assisting the Parrench' cause from the city walls just as good as in the open field as things were right now, and going all around Relouse in order to seek treatment or to try and treat others in the encampments of the Grande Armee in the east would have been a move way to costly in terms of time.

The Yasoi found it easy to dislike the place's layout once inside. He had never seen Relouse inside out truly before, but hell was this place cramped! Trees simply could not grow as close to each other as one could build houses next to each other, so any traditional Yasoi settlement probably would never become this densily populated as a big human city. Less dense was certainly also less efficient in terms of transport, but the tightly packed neighbourhoods were easy fodder for whatever kind of projectile found its way over the high walls. Once a large scale fire would break out, things would become unbearable pretty soon he thought!

Otios was quick to leave Sakar in the hopefully capable hands of a stable boy so his mount would not be in the way of marching troops or panicking inhabitants of which there clearly were many, but even before his hurry to find someone to at least make a brief inspection of his injuries, the Yasoi's fine ears picked up something very different than screams of agony and yelled orders: the unmistakable sound of an arrow whizzing through the air. In the corner of his view, Otios could see a lightly armed man making a protective move too late and collapsing with the projectile sticking out of his shirt.

Laughter and words sounding amused, but spoken in an unfamiliar language could be heard coming from one of the nearby rooftops, but by the time Otios had identified the problem and sent a thunderbolt towards its source, the Eskandr wall jumpers had already moved away by means of force.

Great! Now they were both outside and inside the city, and it seemed the defenders had either not even noticed yet or were too busy with other things to deal with the intruders! Not really knowing what he should do about it, Otios sprinted towards a nearby house and squeezed through the open door neither caring about what the building really was nor whether his owner would agree to his presence. The streets had just become a lot more dangerous. He sought the staircase and did not stop running upwards until he found himself at a dead in the attic.

Nothing to be heard from the other side of the roof tiles. At least nothing indicating the weight of an adult person walking. Otios felt safe to push out a few of the large tiles himself in order to gain access to the outside. If these Eskandr preferred staying above street level -- which admittedly was a quite preferable strategy given the city was crawling with Parrench forces and nobody had apparently expected such an intrusion to happen --, then he'd have to do the same thing in order to catch them. If only he...

What felt like an infernal gust of wind coming out of nowhere laughed at Otios' attempt to keep the collateral damage to anonymous property minimal and instantly created a hole large enough for him to just walk through standing upright and with arms stretched out. It also sent him rear first onto the wooden attic floor again. So... there was at least one force mage, right ? And he landed on the edge of the newly created hole, greeting the Yasoi with some unintelligible Eskandr gibberish that, unknown to Otios, roughly translated to "Hello there! Trying to play hero ?" The wall-jumping warrior looked at the Yasoi with a pair of piercing blue eyes fully integrated into an elaborate pattern of war paint that momentarily blurred in Otios eyes as he recovered from the impact. Then he drew his sword and jumped into the room, a quick end to the fight only being averted by Otios rolling on the floor, not laughing.

Both silver staffs were quickly in his hands, but this was an attic. Nearly everything here was wood or stone, no wet soil and no time to prepare anything else that would grant him the blessing of being conductive. Otios' view made a quick excursion towards the staircase for any other floor in this house would have been preferable to this one, but it seemed the Eskandr was aware of this fact as well and eager to prevent that from happening. Another small lightning strike was sent on its way towards the Eskandr as the latter rushed in to attack with his bare weapon, but either its wielder had anticipated that from happening or launching another blast while charging in was his standard approach. The air forced the lightning's ionized gas apart, causing it to scorch parts of the wooden beams supporting the ceiling instead of hitting the attacker.

It sometimes was a good thing to be already pretty much with one's back to the wall as the force blast did not manage to topple Otios over a second time either this way, leaving him enough situational awareness to perform a masterpiece of beginner's luck by parrying with his silfer staff. Sort of a successful parry as the Eskandr's blade scraped along the staff's smooth surface and found its way into some of Otios' fingers that weren't shielded by a crossguard just as electricity was brute forced the other way round through the wall-jumper's weapon body. Again... the wooden floor they were standing on was really not suited for this, but it was enough current to at least cause some serious pain and lack of muscle control in the warrior's armed hand.

Otios did not really know if all of the fingers on his right hand were still attached to his body, but he certainly felt the grip around the silver staff there weakening rapidly. Staying close to the walls did appear like a good strategy though as it took away all degrees of freedom necessary for him to be hurled through the room by another blast. As long as the walls themselves were sturdy enough. The Eskandr warrior, still struggling with some irregularities caused in his heartbeat, thought about the same and put it to the test. It took him quite a few moments to prepare the spell, but nothing could have prepared Otios ears for the sudden pain that absolutely outweighed the feeling of fresh bruises on his back as the latter had been slammed against the now buckled wall. He could not hear how all the items around him were sent flying as there was only the monotonous, beeping sound of an acoustic overload having occurred.

The inevitable recoil had sent the Eskandr flying backwards as well though, so now the two opponents found them a room's worth of distance away from each other and the wall-jumper seemed to suffer from a moment of exhaustion, too. That kind of violence had been strenuous, but his seven-and-a-half-foot enemy was bleeding badly from his hand and from his ears a bit, too! What chance could that kind of an untrained Yasoi still have with electricity not having done the job that well so far ? The wall-jumper grinned sadistically.

The floor now was a mess of broken tiles and items that had hung on the wall or been arranged in open crates or barrels. One thing got Otios' attention immediately: A poker! It really wasn't like the Yasoi had any confidence in him wielding that better in a melee than his staffs or a proper weapon, but it was made of solid iron and longer than anything else he had at hand, thereby giving a lot more distance! Otios used his long legs to get his foot onto the poker, dragging it closer to himself so to have an easier time picking up quickly as the Eskandr started moving in for another, non-magical attack.

Otios had to put most of poker's weight into his left hand use the right more for balancing things out on the other end. He knew that he would not be able to main proper control for long, but he also knew that such a large metal item was suitable for some amplification. As the wall-jumper approached with his sword at the ready, the atmospheric gases surrounded the poker were stripped of their electrons. A thin, but violent cloud of plasma formed around the metal as it was mercilessly propelled by Otios' mind and imprisoned in a strong magnetic field surrounded the makeshift weapon. It was like fire, just a lot hotter, denser and somewhat controllable, even if the sharp noises and the aggressive colors coming from it did suggest otherwise. The intense and unshielded light emitted from so many electrons combining with their aroms and being ripped off them again hurt in both his own and the wall-jumper's eyes, but the latter continued his attack anyway.

The poker lacked a crossguard just as much as the silver staffs from before and his enemy's capability to wield such a large weapon was severely impaired as well, so why should a proud Eskandr warrior like him stop now that he had his obviously inexperienced foe already halfway down to the knees ? The fancy whatever-it-was around the poker didn't worry him too much for he was confident in his ability to avoid it -- or to just ram his way through it. It was the latter option the Eskandr tried in his rage, but as Otios' grip around the poker started to give way under the pressure of Eskandr muscle and the blade came closer and closer to his skin, the wall-jumper realized his mistake: Eskandr steel started to melt somewhere between a thousand and two thousand degrees and he had just forced his sword into something far hotter than that! The magnetic fields kept the storm away from the poker running along its center, but not from other metallic intruders.

The Eskandr could see how his continued pressure no longer caused Otios to give way, but for his own blade to start folding inwards towards himself before the major part of it dropped to the floor along with molten slag altogether. Now the wooden floor between their feet was on fire for real, but more importantly the poker, now no longer held back by any opposing force, bounced back and burned through the wall-jumper's neck with ease.

The iron captured from the Eskandr's weapon caused the storm hovering a couple of inches away from Otios' hands to emit even more different colors than before, but as hypnotizing and fascinating as it looked, he could just feel that he had to end it soon. If not for the sake of preserving his magical energy reserves, then for the sake of not burning his eyes who had to look at it continuously. Just as he was about to finally leave the room however before the fire would start to consume it, he noticed a heavy thud behind his back that made the floor beneath his feet vibrate slightly.

"Thoralf! You're alright ?" it came out in a rough voice and a familiar tongue the Yasoi was still only barely able to hear. One of the wall-jumper's colleagues had started to worry about his comrade, yet just as he saw Thoralf decaptated and in the process of burning up, his vision was blinded by a brilliant, unidentified object coming at him. With Otios no longer caring about maintaining containment, the storm exploded and burned the other Eskandr enough for him to lose balance on the severely damaged roof. With a scorchingly hot and heavy poker right behind him, the wall-jumper crashed onto the streets below.

Otios salvaged his silver staffs rushed down the stairs the best he still could. He felt in absolutely no shape to deal with a third wall-jumper, but hopefully that had managed to scare them off -- or at least raise a big red flag towards the defenders so they could deal with the remaining intruders themselves. Also he had seriously failed at preventing any property damage in the end, had he ?

Synopsis

Otios promotes himself to Darth Otios, his mission being to show unwary Eskandr what a makeshift lightsaber might look like. What he'd never admit that easily though is that it is his own, utter incompetence in open melee combat that made such a thing necessary in the first place. Also he might try and seek some serious medical attention now.

The Sunday Group

Fynn LaPlace

Click. Click, click, click! Click...

Fynn's hand was bumped against the small folding table quite purposefully as yet another fluctuation in the local mobile communications grid caused his virtual avatar to find a cruel death in the midst of a bunch of zombies. The rather isolated atmosphere inside his van did not really allow him to notice that his vehicle was already driving on gravel instead of thick tarmac polished by millions of tyres, but the shrinking of available bandwidth was indication of being further and further away from the big city enough.

A gentle jolt pushed the rather small man back into the seat.

"You have reached your destination."

Fynn walked forward through the small door into the driver's cab and toggled a red switch that was hidden away in the center console, causing the hologram portraying a slightly overweight individual with long, blonde hair -- himself! -- occupying the driver's seat to vanish. It was not really of the insane quality he would have preferred, but combined with a darkened windshield the illusion was good enough to make other drivers think that someone was actually driving the thing at a glance. Driving around in a car that looked a bit like a cliché gangster's escape vehicle was not illegal, but... technically not even being in the cab it while it was still moving... would have a slightly different affair as certain car makers were will struggling to achieve that kind of autonomy. Maybe it was save to say that the exterior crappyness of the elderly Dodge Ram Wagon was an understatement in terms of its true qualities.

His eyes struggled with the blazing sunlight as the rear doors opened in front of them. Through the flood of light he could see the rough outlines of the other members of the Sunday Group already being there. Being late was certainly his fault, but he could hate it nontheless! The small, but sturdy suitcase was grabbed quickly and Fynn hauled it over to what he internally already designated as 'wreckage'. The reek of oil reached his nose soon, too, but that was to be expected given that the car had been pretty much wrapped halfway around the tree.

That little fact in itself caused Fynn to take a break and turn left and right on the spot. This was a super low traffic country road and not exactly riddled with many trees of the kind present here, right ? So how much reckless smartphone fiddling did it take to veer so dramatically off course here ? The thought was quickly interrupted though as Fynn's eyes finally saw in more detail how his colleages had gathered around the open driver's door and just how they were taking a few closer looks inside. Something was missing here, something that sheer probability dictated should be around given what the wreck's brand and model label on the trunk said.

"Hey! Erm... you guys and girls do know that you should not stick your head inside the vehicle while there are at least several undetonated airbags around you ? Just in case you don't want your faces to be rammed into the corpse in there. And has somebody already checked where all that oil smell comes from ? That stuff can burn and the exhaust manifold's gotta be pretty warm, still."

Fynn put down the small suitcase in his hands and walked over towards the ruined SUV's front to try and open the hood, but that was an effort only achieveable by means of a crowbar out of his van. Of course things were all over the place in there, but having inhaled some more air much closer to the potential source he could at least tell it was only oil leaking and not much more easily igniteable gasoline as well. He'd still need the battery connected, though.

The poor dead man in the driver's seat found his left shin moved and squished a little bit as Fynn had to make some room to access something on the lower part of the dashboard next to the brake pedal. He could already feel on his arms how the onset of decay was outfitting the victim's skin with a waxy layer of disgust, but at least the diagnostic connector didn't jam! He needed the data, and not just the data but also some data behind it, and that was why the thing he had just shoved in there was not just any piece of electronics, but... something a bit more special.

Fynn had little trouble with dumping the hardened suitcase right onto the SUV's roof. Nobody would need the layer of paint to be intact anymore anyway, so he could just as well use it as a makeshift desk while looking onto what the built-in laptop had to show. "Just trying to confirm or rule out the obvious here..." Fynn mumbled more to himself, but still loud enough to make any claim of this also being an attempt to explain what he was doing to his colleagues not entirely unbelieveable. "No matter what kind of runes or other shit the victim has on his skin, we still got a very serious car crash here and quite a bunch of malfunctions after that, too, and I wanna know why..."

Hectically, Fynn's fingers moved accross the keyboard and injected a barrage of instructions into the device before a louder, more distinct thud indicated he had finally been able to hit the return key just knowing everything was ready. "That will take a few minutes. Can you all stand back a bit please, I want to photograph stuff..."

Now just where had he put his camera ? The real camera, not one of those limited excuses that littered every modern smartphone! Some very traditional police work did still have value, too, especially if his boss had already put the real police at sleep!

Hider

- Fynn tries to raise the Sunday Group's awareness towards safety at work
- He does not truly believe this is just an accident either, but focuses more on the car than the symbols on the victim's skin

The Sunday Group

@Fetzen ETA on your post?

@Penny

30 hours, tops.

The Sunday Group

Have been stressed out the past few days. My post should be up tomorrow.

SANDSTRIDERS: A Lost Land

Dalani

As the desert sun scorched the dusty streets of Qadir, Dalani found himself more and more being a lone Ayralite on an increasingly desperate search. This old, beaten up mad had not exactly looked like someone having an easy time to hide, but either Dalani's eyes were deteriorating rapidly in the heat or the traces they tried to follow decayed much more quickly than he had hoped for. He ultimately ran out of further clues just a few hundred steps out of the tavern where the unfortunate events had taken place.

What should he do now ? Just standing there, dumbfounded like a pillar, and letting the few passer-bys who dared to confront the blazing heat openly just watch the crystals on his head glisten in the intense light did not sound like a good choice. It certainly didn't feel like it either as Dalani could already sense some serious buildup of sweat on his skin. The Ayralite retreated into the shadows, saddened that he had not been able to find the one he had been trying to follow.

Qadir deserved being left behind. Maybe there were people who happily lived assuming that an earth Ayralite had to think of a desert as a paradise because there was no other place where their element was so blatantly and ubiquitously visible, but Dalani could only disapprove. The sand irritated the eyes, the heat put a constant strain on one's body and last but not least there were those Tawran people who constantly mistook themselves for a weird sort of slaves who had to obey and serve for some axiomatic reasoning. Time to start packing!

Dalani happily left the heat outside to its own devices while he found retreat in the small, halfway subterranean room he had rented for the anticipated duration of his stay. A quite clever construction he had to admit: Far down enough in the earth to benefit from its temperature-stabilizing and cooling effect, yet at the same time with its ceiling a tad above ground level so to let in some light through small windows -- enough to illuminate stuff once the eyes had adjusted, but also not enough to introduce additional warmth. It really wasn't like a high ground water level was an issue with the cellars here after all. The Ayralite packed his stuff with just barely enough care and precision so not to make things fall out of their bag on a rough journey and, of course, not to damage anything. That included his armor, simply because wearing that heavy, dark stuff would provide at least as much discomfort as it would offer protection.

One question of not so negligible importance remained however: How to make some solid distance once outside the gates ? Horses were expensive, especially if one probably needed more than one in order to get one's not so little self and gear hauled around, but joining a caravan would be much cheaper while possibly also being safer! Just... where to find one ? It wasn't like there was a strict schedule of arrivals and departures or any kind of market where free spots where sold, was it ?

So, somewhat oblivious towards what might be the best approach, Dalani headed out with his back covered in bags, clothes and his weapons. Maybe the city gates were a good place to start indeed for everyone had to get in and out that way.